


spidersilk and eyelashes

by screechfox



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Mind Control, Non-Consensual Body Modification, POV Jonathan Sims, Season/Series 04, Spiders, Spiders in Mouths, Transformation, Web!Jonathan Sims, all of these things in canon-typical amounts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 16:58:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19795111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screechfox/pseuds/screechfox
Summary: The spider is motionless as Jon raises it towards his mouth with painful slowness. One thin leg scratches against his jaw, and then another. With a muttered curse word, he parts his lips to let it climb inside.Annabelle Cane has Melanie. In exchange, she wants Jon.





	spidersilk and eyelashes

**Author's Note:**

> i learnt so many things about spiders when researching for this fic. _so many._
> 
> also coming up with a voice for annabelle cane was fun, considering we've never actually heard her speak.
> 
> edited 17/07/2019 to adjust a few paragraph breaks.

Annabelle Cane looks like any other student. She’s tall and rail-thin, with an uncoordinated outfit that lands just this side of fashionable, and a web of scarring that stretches across her temple and below the dark roots of her hairline.

“Ms. Cane,” Jon greets, with an incline of his head.

“Call me Annabelle,” she insists. Her voice is quiet, warm like the oppressive humidity of a summer’s day in London. “We’re all friends here, aren’t we?”

“Where’s Melanie?”

Annabelle Cane smiles, soft like a slow death. She twitches her fingers — Jon thinks of whirling legs drawn in black ink — and Melanie drags herself out of the shadows.

Melanie looks terrible, bloodied and bruised, with ink-dark circles staining the skin below her eyes. Even now, standing right in front of her, Jon doesn’t know exactly how long the Web has been keeping her for. An odd relief pools in his stomach as he watches her strain against the control. Jon can almost see the glint of a bloodied knife in the steel-grey fury of her eyes.

“Let her go,” he demands, with far more confidence than he feels.

“Not yet,” Annabelle Cane says, matter of fact. “I’ll let her go once you’ve done your part.”

“How do I know you’ll keep up _your_ side of the bargain?”

“The Web doesn’t need her. She’s entertaining enough, but she’s really not ideal for our current goals.” Annabelle Cane makes a face, like she’s talking about being given the wrong order at a coffee shop. “Believe me when I say I don’t care about her one way or the other.”

If possible, Melanie looks even more murderous at being brushed off as insignificant.

“Right,” Jon says, feeling a little faint. “I’m the one you want.”

A small black shape, about an inch wide, creeps out from below the curls of Annabelle Cane’s hair. It crawls across her cheekbone and she smiles that soft and deadly smile again.

“Well, you or the other one. The Web would have been happy with either of you. It’s funny how your Archives tend to attract people in need of a sense of control.”

“You’ll stay away from Martin?”

Annabelle Cane nods, pleasant and agreeable — but of course she would. The Web may not be the Spiral but that hardly means that they’re trustworthy.

“Personally,” she says, leaning forward like she’s sharing a secret, “I’m glad it was you who came.”

Jon’s eyes track the movement of the spider across her face. He feels an echo of scurrying legs against his own skin and he’s only half-sure he’s imagining it. He buries his hands in his pockets to stop himself from scratching at his cheek.

“Why?” He forces curious intent into the question, just because he can. Annabelle Cane laughs, clapping her hands together in obvious delight. The spider slips from her face and down her neck, perching delicately on the collar of her shirt.

“Oh, I think we’ve got a lot in common, Jon! You’re a natural already; it shouldn’t take you long to figure out how the Web does things.”

Jon freezes, a chill running up his spine. At least, he hopes it’s a chill.

“Besides,” she continues, “the last thing I need is a Lukas on my back. I get you, he gets the one in the knitwear, the Institute gets you both, and _everyone’s_ happy.”

“Except me,” Jon mutters — not quietly enough.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Annabelle Cane’s smile fades into a contemplative expression. “I think you’ll get used to it. You’ve always seemed like the kind of guy who’d be _much_ happier if everything was under his control.”

Jon feels a wave of skin-crawling self-disgust at that, like a thousand tiny legs skittering across his flesh. He _isn’t_ like her, or any of the other creatures like her.

(But he will be. That’s the whole point of this terrible bargain.)

“Okay,” he breathes. “Let’s— let’s get this over with.”

Annabelle Cane lifts a hand to her shoulder, urging the spider onto her palm with little effort.

“Just let it in.”

“That’s— that’s not exactly a lot of detail,” Jon comments when it’s clear she isn’t going to offer any further explanation. “Very _vague._ What exactly do you want me to do?”

“You’ll know,” she says, a playful lilt to her voice. She holds out the spider like it’s a gift she’s giving him, as though the sight of the dark shape nestled in her palm doesn’t make him want to vomit. Jon doesn’t have any choice but to accept it with gritted teeth, holding out his own hand for the spider to crawl onto. It watches him, unnatural intelligence behind an unblinking gaze.

Jon _does_ know, he realises. He’s known since he decided to come here.

“That’s literal.”

“Why over-complicate it?” Annabelle Cane shrugs one shoulder, the epitome of casual. “Don’t take too long — you wanted to get it over with, remember?”

“You aren’t just going to— _make_ me do it?” He glances at Melanie, whose struggles have slowed as she observes the conversation. She glowers at his attention; if she could speak, she’d be telling him to stop chatting with the creepy spider lady and get them out of there.

Annabelle Cane goes quiet. Her eyes are dark and far away, and her fingers crawl across her jeans like— well, like spiders, of course. 

“Choice can be important sometimes,” she says at last.

“Did _you_ choose?” 

Her head tilts as she considers, and then she smiles.

“Yes. I did, in a way. I chose to give up my concept of choice. You’ll understand.”

“Right.” Jon doesn’t bother pointing out how that isn’t very reassuring. Her smile may be gentle but something malicious glitters behind it, enjoying every second of his discomfort.

“I’ll give you my statement, if you want,” she offers. Despite himself, Jon straightens up, and she grins at him with teeth that are far too sharp for his liking. “After we’re done here, though.”

“Do you have somewhere else to be, Ms. Cane?”

“We both do,” she says, with a pointed raise of her brows. She nods her head to the spider perched on his hand, an unspoken demand to stop stalling and get to his side of the bargain. Not a bad idea, relatively speaking; asking more questions is only going to make the apprehension worse.

He glances at Melanie, whose eyes have narrowed in wariness. He tries smiling at her but it comes out pained, and the expression only seems to make her angrier. Jon takes one unsteady breath, steeling himself for what he has to do.

_Just let it in._

The spider is motionless as Jon raises it towards his mouth with painful slowness. One thin leg scratches against his jaw, and then another. With a muttered curse word, he parts his lips to let it climb inside. It rests on his tongue, so light that he’d forget about it if it weren’t so nauseating. He doesn’t dare move, waiting for whatever terrible thing is going to happen next.

Leaving the stickiness of webs in its wake, the spider begins to climb down his throat. The sensation is… distracting. It isn’t quite pain but it certainly isn’t comfortable either. He should be choking as it blocks his airway, but, well… For the last few months, breathing has been a habit he’s kept up to make himself feel better.

His tongue is free to move again, and he feels spider silk shifting inside his mouth with every tentative motion. It’s not restricting him, per say, but it’s an undeniable presence that still leaves him uneasy. It coats his tongue and teeth, awful and tasteless. There’s far too much of it for one spider, but Jon is beyond trying to rationalise supernatural occurrences.

Horror has descended onto Melanie’s face, slipping out from behind the anger and the wariness and the exhaustion. _I’m sorry,_ Jon thinks, but even if he trusted himself to speak through the thick layers of web, he doesn’t think he could put voice to the apology.

After what feels like hours, the spider settles at the bottom of Jon’s windpipe like it were made for the spot. Somehow, he can feel it stretching its legs into the outskirts of his lungs.

“No backing out now,” Annabelle Cane says, a pleased little smile on her face.

Jon tries to breathe even though he knows he can’t; the air sticks in his throat until he gives in and coughs it back up again. Webs catch on his lips, and then on his fingers when he reaches up to wipe them away. He stares at the silver that sits starkly against his skin, and half-expects it to start pulling him towards a door.

His legs waver with dizziness as the spider produces more and more webs. Thin lines of tape unspool into Jon’s lungs. With awful slowness, he feels them start to fill his veins and clog his heart. His pulse beats sluggishly, each reluctant flutter dragging silk to every corner of his body.

The physicality of it all is nothing, of course, when he thinks about the spiderwebs climbing through his veins and clinging to his brain. Maybe it’s already happening, and the spider is tugging at his thoughts without him even noticing. That’s what they do, after all — what _he’s_ going to do when the Web has had its way with him.

Maybe that’s why Annabelle Cane looks at him with knowing in her unblinking gaze: it’s one of _her_ spiders nestled in the flesh below his sternum, _her_ webs clotting in his blood. He is becoming an extension of her, just as she is an extension of something larger than both of them.

She isn’t the only one who can _know_ things, though, is she?

The Eye yields to his desires more easily than ever before, and that sight-that-isn’t-sight fills his awareness. It prickles against his skin in a way entirely unlike the phantom crawling of spiderlegs. He finds his vision — his normal, human vision — blurring with tears of uncomfortable relief. 

Annabelle Cane has eight black eyes, too many limbs, and her bones are home to a never-ending flood of writhing, pitch-dark bodies. When she shifts in discomfort under his gaze it’s clear how her body is ill-fitting for the thing that lies underneath, spinning silver misdirections.

He squeezes his eyes shut, but the truth of her is still imprinted in his brain like an afterimage.

“No need to _stare,”_ she chides, voice quiet.

Despite everything, Jon finds himself laughing, a touch hysterical. The spidersilk tangles in his vocal cords, and the sound that comes out of his mouth is just about unrecognisable as anything human. It cracks apart and… chitters. He can’t think of another word for it. There’s a sharp, horrified inhale from Melanie’s direction. Jon wants to open his eyes to see her face, but something stops him from doing so.

Underneath Jon’s sternum, the spider begins to drum its legs in an erratic rhythm. It reverberates along the webs strung through his entire body. Tension leaks from his muscles, leaving him languid and drowsy, entirely disinclined to move. It’s like there’s a lullaby vibrating in his bones. The feeling strokes through his hair, a pacifying resonance knocking against his skull.

The Mother of Puppets may be a more fitting epithet than he would ever have guessed.

In the detachment of the darkness behind his eyelids, sensations are more tangible. He can catalogue every firm tug of metamorphosis with an Archivist’s precision. His fear seems very far away, trapped and struggling on the outskirts of his mind.

Jon feels Annabelle’s footsteps resonate through the floor as she approaches him.

She places her hands on either side of his face, warm against the bloodless cool of his flesh. Before Jon can summon the energy to shift away, she begins to tap that same hypnotic rhythm. It’s— pleasant. The part of his brain that would object to the touch is asleep, or trapped, or maybe even lost entirely, so all he feels is a strange, animal relaxation. He finds himself leaning into her palms, feeling her nails gently scraping against his cheeks.

Jon isn’t sure he’s ever felt so calm.

Annabelle goes still with jarring abruptness, and he feels small spiders crawling from her fingertips. He can’t count how many, too distracted by the marching rhythm of their feet. Annabelle resumes her gentle drumming, and Jon forgets to wonder why the spiders are there.

(He thinks Annabelle might be forgetting to wonder too.)

The spiders settle at various points of his face, a pleasing symmetry to their arrangement. 

Melanie makes an angry wordless sound, a complicated knot of unhappy emotions that Jon wouldn’t be able to untangle in his right mind, let alone now. 

There’s a moment of peace, tap-tap-tap on his thoughts. Then— 

_Pain,_ and a familiar sort of burrowing.

Fear rises, breaking past the strange entrancement that had overcome him. He tries to move, but webs go taut in his muscles, leaving him tense and statue-still. He wants to run, to claw at his skin and get rid of the awful creatures eating into his flesh and making a home of his body. Something runs down his face. It _should_ be blood, but he knows he’s too far changed for that; lines of silk slip from the wounds, a shimmering mockery of tear-tracks.

All throughout, there’s that transfixing rhythm trying to tug his thoughts into line again: spiderlegs and webs and Annabelle’s gentle touch all at once.

Jon clings to his rediscovered lucidity with all of his willpower.

After a few moments, the pain becomes… bearable. Jon has felt a lot worse, at the very least. The injured noises that come from his throat are quiet enough that their inhuman quality is barely noticeable. His horror is a numb and helpless thing; there’s nothing he can do except try to hold onto whatever remains of himself.

Compared to Prentiss’ worms, the spiders don’t go deep. They settle a centimetre or two into his flesh, bodies exposed to the open air. The pain fades to a prickling ache as the skin heals and the spiders set out to whatever purpose they have.

“I think you might be nearly done,” Annabelle says, removing her hands from his face and taking a few steps backwards. She sounds thoughtful, maybe even curious, as though even _she_ doesn’t know what’s been happening all this time. Maybe she doesn’t.

Melanie is biting out half-formed curse words. She thinks she’s going to die, Jon knows, as surely as if it were written on a page in front of him. Food for the monsters. She is so terribly scared of being trapped twice over; the Web would _savour_ the taste of her fear.

No. Whatever he is now, he won’t let that happen to her.

Jon is surprised to realise that he can move again. He reaches a shaking hand to his face. Eyes still shut, he wipes at the trails of silk on his cheeks, testing his range of movement. He’s still _aware_ of the webs throughout his body, but they’ve gone slack. For the moment, he’s the only thing controlling himself.

With something like reluctance, Jon opens his eyes.

He opens _all_ of his eyes.

The silver-stained wounds blink as he touches them, squinting against the sudden intrusion of light. Eight twitching legs poke out from each one, a parody of long, dark eyelashes.

There’s one eye on each cheekbone, and four spaced evenly on his forehead. Jon feels a nauseating disorientation as his brain tries to adjust to the new inputs of information. He blinks each set of eyes in turn, then brushes his hair backwards with one hand in a futile attempt to clear his vision. Christ, when was the last time he got a haircut?

Melanie jerks her chin upwards in defiance when he focuses his gaze on her. If Jon were still human, the dagger-gleam of her anger would be all he’d know; she hides her fear well.

 _I’m sorry,_ he thinks again, and still can’t bring himself to try and say it.

The spider in his chest still knocks its legs against his being, but it seems subdued now, its purpose concluded. The rhythm is— enticing, yes, but Jon feels clear-headed like he hasn’t in a long time. His own better judgement reminds him that his thoughts are still being influenced, but… he feels like himself, more or less. Calmer, perhaps, but that’s hardly worth complaining about.

Annabelle continues to tap her fingers, now against her own legs. It’s less of a lullaby now, and more of a warm greeting between friends — a wave, a handshake, a hug, all wrapped up in one rhythm that thrums gently between them.

Far more intense are the reverberations of web as Melanie tries to move. She’s exhausted, but even now, fear and anger fuel her stubborn attempts to get free. If Jon tilts his head and looks at her right, he can _see_ the gleam of the webs wrapped around her, tight enough that they’d cut off her circulation if they were actually tangible. It looks painful.

Jon glances at Annabelle, and she shrugs, burying her hands in her pockets. There’s something anticipatory to the hungry cast of her expression.

Jon looks back at Melanie. He came here for a reason, he reminds himself. Whatever he’s become — a creature of staring eyes and clinging webs that refuse to look away or let go — he has to do this. For Melanie, and for the terrified man he was before the spider strung puppet-strings through his being.

(It’s odd. Terror has been his baseline for so long that he’d almost forgotten how it felt to be… calm. Centered. Full of purpose.)

Strands of silk vibrate at his fingertips. He jerks his hands in an instinctual motion, and all the webs release Melanie at once. She stumbles forwards, all her struggles resulting in sudden motion. Her brow furrows with lines of anger and confusion. She takes one wary step towards him, coiled muscles promising violence.

Jon twitches his fingers again, tugging on the thread that will pull her back to the Institute. He came here to protect her, and the Archives… well, they’re not perfect, but they’re the safest place he knows. She needs to get far away from this room full of hungry spiders and cobwebs, two monsters standing at the center with matching sets of dark eyes.

Melanie begins to walk. It’s jerky and unnatural, puppeted by the silver clinging to the hems of her fraying jeans, but it’s movement. It will get her to where Jon needs her to be, he’s certain.

Any hint of conflict on her face vanishes, replaced by fury and betrayal.

“I’m going to kill you,” she says, without any hesitation.

Jon feels a flicker of something that might be guilt, but it’s pulled away from him before he can examine it.

One step, then another, then another. Melanie opens the door, fingers going white-knuckle on the handle as she tries to resist. Then she’s gone, turning down the street and beginning the long walk back to the Institute.

Jon stops watching after that, though the threads wrapped around his hand still tug occasionally as she tries to resist. It’s reassuring, in a way.

“I told you that you’d take to it,” Annabelle says, after a few moments. “Subtle, too! I had to _tell_ people what to do when I began. I nearly got slapped once when the order didn’t quite take.”

Somehow, the companionable flow of her voice no longer feels off-putting. Jon even finds his lips curving into a tired smile. After all, they’re siblings in web, if not in blood — though the two are now one and the same for Jon, he supposes. He’s curious about her, even more than before, but he’s also exhausted to his bones. If he’s honest, he’d quite like to curl up and sleep for a week.

There’s another tug of web — not from Melanie, or Annabelle, but from something larger: an infinite tapestry of traps and manipulation, and the Mother of Puppets at its centre. Unlike the detachment of the Ceaseless Watcher’s gazer, the Web is letting him _feel_ his usefulness, purpose thrumming in his bones. He thinks he might finally understand why Jude was so devoted to her god, if the burning love she felt was anything comparable to this sense of profound connection to something far larger.

(When he woke up from his coma, he felt so disconnected from the rest of the world. For all Daisy’s efforts, that didn’t change. But now, he doesn’t have to be alone or isolated ever again.)

Jon probes his silkbound tongue through his mouth, trying to figure out how to speak without the sound breaking into a hundred arachnid clicks.

“Your statement, please, Annabelle,” he manages, just about comprehensible.

Annabelle smiles. She steps towards the door, pulling at his strings to get him to follow. For the moment, he lets himself be led. They’ve got somewhere to be, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> i know i _keep_ saying this, but i definitely want to write more in this au. spiderjon has such rich and terrible possibilities that i could explore...
> 
> you can find me at [screechfoxes](https://screechfoxes.tumblr.com) on tumblr!
> 
> i hope you enjoyed the fic!


End file.
